Top level domain name company Donuts is currently running sunrise for four Chinese IDN domain names, but it has yet to set general availability dates for the four domains.

Some registrars had planned to offer the domains in general availability by the end of this year. But Donuts, in response to an inquiry from Domain Name Wire, said that it will hold off on general availability until it gets approved by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). This approval is necessary for Chinese residents to buy and subsequently host the domain names in China.

MIIT approved three Western top level domain name companies’ domains (.Club, .VIP and .XYZ) this week. New top level domain name companies hope that this opens up the floodgates for more approvals. Click to continue reading…

It’s been nearly three years since new top level domain names started rolling off of the DNS printing press. A lot of people made bad predictions about how TLDs would do in general, and a lot of people over or underestimated particularly strings.

Include me in the camp that’s surprised by the relative success and failure of certain strings. Here are some.

Outperformed

These are strings that are doing better than I expected them to.

.XYZ – I’m not looking at raw numbers here. I think all readers understand the pricing mechanisms at play that sent .XYZ to over 6.5 million domains. But here’s what impresses me about .XYZ…going in, I thought this had little chance. XYZ is hard to type on your keyboard, it’s three syllables, it doesn’t really mean anything, and I thought that other generics like .online and .site would be more appealing to users. What I didn’t think about is how it’s nearly impossible to brand something like .site. It’s too generic. XYZ has turned .xyz into a brand and has attracted big names I would have never expected to set up a site on .xyz.

.Cloud – Don’t get me wrong here. The cloud business is huge right now. But I suspected .cloud would be a high price, low volume business. Instead, .Cloud is a low price, high volume domain with over 80,000 registrations.

.Guru – First mover advantage? Absolutely. But people keep renewing their .guru domains. It has about 60,000 in the zone.

.Live – It was hard to predict several years ago that live streaming and video would take off like it has. Rightside has done a good job branding .Live for that market, and has marketed it wisely. It has nearly 75,000 names in the zone. Click here to continue reading…

Chris Schidle is upset with Automattic right now because he couldn’t get Chris.blog. And I don’t blame him.

Chris isn’t an idiot. He’s also an entrepreneur. When he paid $250 to apply for the domain name Chris.blog in August, he read the description of what he was getting into and even verified details with Automattic’s support team.

The way it looked to him, if he was the only applicant then he’d get the domain name. If there was more than one applicant then it would go to auction.

Chris wasn’t placing a landrush order through a registrar. Landrush didn’t open until much later. He placed the order through WordPress’ site. Click to continue reading…

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com that is launching .blog, is going with a traditional landrush format rather than the recently-popularized “early access” model for new top level domain name launches.

The landrush period runs through the afternoon of November 9. Between now and then, people who want first dibs on .blog domain names can place a landrush order at a registrar. Most registrars seem to be charging around $200.

If more than one person applies for the same .blog domain name during landrush, the domain will proceed to an auction at Sedo.

Other than a shorter-than-usual landrush period, .Blog’s landrush is essentially the model that had been used for years for domain launches before new top level domain names came out. Click here to continue reading…

DotStrategy, the company behind .buzz, is holding a sealed auction for the domain.

.Buzz has always fascinated me, and not just because of the unique characteristics of the domain itself. It has essentially been led from concept to execution by one person, Bill Doshier, who had no prior experience in the domain name business.